And many others haven’t noticed. But in the meanwhile, since the end of the 19th century, when the surgery had become a craft, guarantying patient’s survival well (in Napoleon’s times nearly 1/3 of all surgical patients died of sepsis), the special subculture became to form on the West. Women with stumps have for some reason become erotic and sensual in it. And this subculture enlarges its influence: legless models with artificial limbs come on podium; one of the “Beatles” participants – Paul McCartney – is contracted with one-legged woman; in “Titanic” film, watched all over the world, in one dialog the main character all of a sudden and inappropriately mentions a one-legged prostitute, who had been his model in Paris; and so on. All is going of itself: some need to raise their busyness ratings and editions, and others are just bored and don’t know what to do. Finally the first group states the amputated-women to be a beauty ideal[40] and second without thinking it over “eat” this “exotics”. Whether we like it or not, but the cult of bodily injuries aesthetical appeal is formed.
Of course, he who was injured but not broken, who tries to live a normal life, to be useful for humanity and who have a success in it is worthy of respect. And the society should support him in it. It means that ramps and wheelchair elevators in the streets, at houses and in transport, the development of prosthesis, sport for invalids and all of a kind is necessary in the society with cripples. Let the relations of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, who some time still having two legs posed for “erotic” magazines, be really pure. Let Amy Mullens, who has lost legs in an early childhood, live as others, go into track and field athletics for his pleasure and health and feel himself normal, not defective one…
But the question appears: how will an empty-headed crowd-man, looking only for pleasure, unconsciously react to the cult of injuries, if those who have them have reached something desirable for him, without what he really or imaginary suffers? Including special feelings in sex, which healthy one cannot get? Many people think, “All can be given for sex”, – and if an amputation helps to become more sexual attractive and opens a way to exotic experience in sex, then wait: the unconscious, and particularly conscious, behaviour algorithm of jaded and perverted crowd will react to the cripple-cult with growth of amputation statistics. It will correspond to the medical testimony, but naturally will be based on morally psychological hidden motive – one wants an “exotics”. If it seems for woman that to become sensual and get sexual power she needs to lose her leg – she will “lose” it, but essentially the leg will be torn away by unconscious psychological levels, which would provoke the corresponding injury or psychosomatic disease.
Whatever we think of scientology, but using its terms, this associative relation in the article I‘ve read is very bad “Ingram”, activated today by mass media and cultural workers. And so-called “body-art”, also actively cultivated, has begun from face and ear pricking, but now it becomes a “decorative-aesthetical” maiming and amputations oriented on satisfaction of low egoistic wills.
Don’t think, however, that we have digressed from a theme of matrix algorithms in myths and works of art appearance. What do we know of Artemis cult?
As I remember, she was a goddess of hunt and her totem (spiritual, sacred) animals were a fallow-deer and a bear; she considered to be a protector of child-bearing; her Roman name was Diana. She was a virgin and was much more punctilious in this question than many other Olympus goddesses.
You are right, Mr. Holmes; and one can read of it in myths about Artemis. But very few know that the special significance in her cult was given to eunuchs – forced guarantors of the virginity of those maidens, who hadn’t been defiled before meeting them. Ephesus, where was one of the main cult temple, wasn’t an exclusion.
The castration is one the most ancient and mysterious phenomenon in the human history. Men serving Artemis during the rites exited themselves to the highest degree and castrated one another. After it they continued to “serve the goddess” but in women’s clothes. The history of the religious castration counts several thousand of years, and still can be found in the religious community of chiggers in India. This strange sect consists of pseudo-Muslims and Hinduists who esteem Bharukara-Mate – the goddess from Gujarat. Eunuchs serve to her as well as to Artemis or to Phoenician Astarta.
Count, how do you think, what are the causes and goals of such a strange ritual as a castration?
I think that this is a reaction on hypertrophied feeling of sexual instincts pressure, which men cannot resist. The castration is an attempt to escape this pressure.
In another even more tense case, this is a will to be saved from a psychological subordination to a woman through uncontrollable instincts, excited by so-called “demoniacal” women. Because of these traits of character and the behaviour of some women many cultures considered and consider women to be a social source of evil. But, as I see it, so-called men who can’t free themselves from the dictates of “demoniacal” women through the instincts are the evil as well. And this evil is even more dangerous because a “demoniacal” woman can easily arrest one's attention and a man is her captive and obedient servant. He plays dirty tricks on the quite, either disguising himself as a delicate and tolerant one (like Gorbachev did) or (like Hitler) plainly venting his angriness upon everybody who seems week to him.
In other words, the religious castration can express not only the weak will to struggle against the instincts. But as well a very strong demonism, pretending to something more than small demons busy with everyday routine pretend to. And what for the women with amputations claiming to an erotic appeal and a power based on sexual instincts – this is an answer of demonism. After an amputation some nervous system resources become completely free of controlling the lost parts of a corpse. And they now can be used for some kind of mystical psychological activities. Anyway, the Celtic epos researcher Shkunaev reports, that some characters of the myths “…had studied the secret knowledge and the druidic wisdom for seventeen years and after their right legs and left hands were cut off. It was a stable feature of one connected with the demonic incarnation of the other world”.
For an ordinary man of that time such injuries were incompatible with life. Even today the vast majority of people with amputations live thanks to medicine. And according to it just a look to these “devoted to the secret knowledge of cripples” was a signal of danger for all healthy of their tribe. But before they were maimed they were taught. And stirring up the instinct of self-preservation they were able to build some other superstructures in the psyche of their tribesmen while their will was depressed by the activated instinct. By the way, the cripple admirers are ridiculously called “devotee”, and it’s so near to “devoted”, isn’t it?
Dear Holmes, we have remembered all of this in connection with social mystics and human’s mystical abilities. Let’s return to 356 B.C. and imagine the conflict of the demonisms of two kinds that has a result of something similar to the incident in the Hermitage June 15, 1985. It was much easier for the historians of the past to justify the burning of the Temple on the basis of Herostratus’s vanity. They had no need to explain all the mystical motivation of his doing and thus undermine the power of different programming oracles, which they worked for. Even if Herostratus was vain and conceited and had no other causes, hidden by ancient investigators, he became a Providence’s instrument concerning the Artemis cult. After the destruction of the Temple of Ephesus it has never raised so high once again. The rating has gone down, as one can say today.